So, as I've mentioned before, my property professor is "constitutionally incapable" of maintaining formality. One of the effects of this is that there are frequent outbursts of uncontrolled laughter from the professor (about some things) and then from us the students (usually about other things). Occasionally, we manage to get it all together and laugh at the same things.
This past week during our Tuesday class the professor called on one of the evening students to solve a problem in our casebook concerning the rule against perpetuities. For my non-(lawyer/law-student) friends the rule against perpetuities is an evil, evil creation meant to confound first-year law students; and the confoundment {did I just make up a word?} lasts for the rest perpetuity for many lawyers--or at least until 21 years after his/her death.
The "call" of the question required that the student advise a client on the issue brought up in the problem. The student who was one of the marginally confused came up with this great answer chock-full of legal mumbo jumbo that would sound really impressive to someone who didn't know diddly-squat and is instantly identifiable as complete BS to those who do know squat.
The professor borrowed a phrase from our contracts professor, "it is kind of surreal when you string legal terms together that have no relation to one another." At this point the professor goes into a Looney Tunes, Bugs Bunny meets "Who's on first?" meets Black's Law Dictionary performance. It was really funny, but unfortunately my writing skills (and my memory) are not sufficient to rise to the challenge of recreating it for you. Let me just say that I will never have the proper meaning of mens rea in my head from here on out.
So once the professor finished he returned to the student and asked him again to answer the question. The student, without missing a beat throws out another unrelated phrase that is extremely relevant to the doctrine of consideration (which is what we are studying in contracts) but of absolutely no importance to the rule against perpetuities. "Touché," says the professor and then moves on to another student.
* * *
Learning in law school requires the use of a series of scenarios or hypotheticals to firmly establish all of the nuances of the rules and the way that they apply to given situations. It is amazingly difficult to come up with sound hypos on the fly. The professors have a hard time doing it, and in theory they know what they are talking about, so when first-year students try it there are some very funny outcomes.
On Thursday one of the majorly confused gave us all a good laugh. We thankfully moved on from (i.e. abandoned) the rule against perpetuities and began studying co-tenancies in all their glorious varieties. One of these varieties is the tenancy by the entirety which can only arise between a married couple. The variety we were spending the most time on was the joint tenancy which has all of the elements of a tenancy in the entirety, minus the marriage. Some of us were having a difficult time understanding when a joint tenancy would become a tenants in common situation and how the transmutation didn't necessarily affect all of the people who had been part of the joint tenancy.
In this case, my classmate inadvertantly proposed to the professor; he meant to create a hypo with a joint tenancy and inadvertantly said tenancy by the entirety. So, the state of Oklahoma now recognizes gay marriage, and Mrs. property professor has a husband that is scarred for the rest of his teaching career.
Stay tuned for more nerdy law school fun!
